How do you do Mr.Not New But Yet Unintroduced Co-worker?

I still have not figured out a good method for dealing with this issue. Maybe someone else can shed light on this unexpectedly awkward problem . . .

You never get introduced to everyone in a large office. It's not exactly an issue when you have the type of boss who introduces you to everyone you will be working with and then rest of your massive company exits on some exterior corporate plain. It is an issue when you get introduced to, say, the 12 people you generally work with in an office where you're constantly coming into contact with people you don't know who also work in the same office. The breakroom, the bathroom, the printer and the like present high risk locations for running into these people. And going up to each and everyone and saying,"Hi, we haven't met. I'm Sarah. I work in the creative dept," had once seemed like the obvious choice for dealing with these situations and decreasing them (more introductions = fewer unknown coworkers). But sadly, I learned early on that my amicable instincts were wrong.

An office is just like a box of chocolates . . . I've learned many are filled with extremely unfriendly, super shy and perhaps socially inept "chocolates". When I first started my job here and being introduced to about 1/3 of my co-workers, I did my best to be friendly and say hello and ask people who they were and their positions. This went on for about 2 days, before I simply gave up. Usually I felt like I was interupting the peoples' regularly scheduled programming as they were rushing back to their desks. I started up a conversation with one coworker only to be barraged by other fully aquainted amongst themselves (yet still unknown to me)coworkers coming in and me, being unperepared for the onslaught, decided to quickly tidy up my introductory chat and scurry away instead of going up to 5 new coworkers at once and proclaiming my newness and my position and inquiring the same. Bad idea? Still not quite sure, but since I failed to introduce myself to everyone else in the break room, the one guy I did talk to felt I was coming onto him, and avoided all contact with me. Don't flatter yourself bub; I was just trying to be nice! Sheesh.

So I adopted the "I'll show you mine if you show me yours first" policy of inter-coworker mingling. If an unknown coworker seems talkative and friendly, then I can go ahead and reciprocate. This was a successful strategy about 25% of the time. The other 75% of the time, I think the everyone else adopted the same policy and so it was just a Mexican Standoff, or timing was just off. People don't seem mean, or anti-social, but just busy going about their days, leaving as I was entering, in conversation with someone they already knew, bobbing while I was weaving, and vice versa. I resolved to stop taking things into my own hands and let the forces of corporate culture (meetings, comittees, in office lunchs at big communal tables) do the work for me. This task was greater than myself.

Flash forward to now- our office merges with the Tech Dept downstairs. New office, new desk, new people to not know, and yet, no introductions for anyone! Since theoretically we've all been "working together" this whole time. So I find myself right back where I started.

What do you think? Name tags? :-)